richrelevance Wins 2009 Shop.org Innovation Contest for Thought Leadership

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--richrelevance™, the leading provider of next-generation personalized product recommendations that enhance the shopping experience and drive sales, today announced that it has won the inaugural Shop.org Innovation Contest. The contest awards the top five ideas for how retailers can succeed in the current economy and prepare for future success.

Shop.org’s retail members selected richrelevance for its pay-for-performance business model. The company, whose clients are among the largest in eCommerce including Sears.com, does not charge clients any upfront, installation or license fees, instead employing a pure pay-for-performance model. This means richrelevance is incentivized to get retailers up and running as quickly as possible with effective integrations that deliver maximum results.

As one of the five winners, richrelevance will take the stage today at the 2009 Shop.org Strategy & Innovation Forum in Orlando, Florida. During the presentation, richrelevance will speak to the benefits of securing accountability from technology partners. By paying only upon receiving a return on investment, the retailer can ensure that technology vendors deliver on their promises, allowing the merchant to be more competitive by increasing sales at the lowest possible cost.

“richrelevance is in tune with the needs of our market, and we are very excited to be recognized by the retailers themselves for our innovative business model,” said David Selinger, Chief Executive Officer of richrelevance. “We do not require retailers to make an up-front investment in our recommendations platform, and we only charge our customers for sales that we drive on their sites. For richrelevance, this means we need to deliver the absolute highest-quality product recommendations on the market, and for our clients, it means they can immediately boost sales with zero risk and a minimal investment of resources – a perfect win-win in this economy.”

richrelevance provides next-generation personalized recommendations for leading eCommerce sites, including Burton and Kmart. In order to provide the most appropriate product recommendations to online shoppers, richrelevance analyzes dozens of shopping behaviors and data inputs in real-time, including previous purchases, key search terms and specific product preferences. As shoppers navigate a merchant’s enhanced web site, they are presented with the most relevant products that suit their needs, style and purchase intent in each moment. With richrelevance, recommendations automatically adapt throughout the shopping experience based on a customer’s real-time behavior – not just their past purchases – driving measurable improvements in conversion and greatly enhancing the customer experience.

About richrelevance

richrelevance is the market and technology leader in next-generation personalized recommendations for leading eCommerce sites, including Sears.com. Founded by the former head of Amazon’s Personalization R&D team, the company's products increase sales by 5-30% by personalizing the shopping experience through targeted merchandising. The richrelevance recommendations platform outperforms popular collaborative filtering-based solutions through the use of over 20 different recommendation types, cross-placement optimization, and a closed-feedback loop. The SaaS-based offering is easily integrated, and empowers merchandisers through a robust, patent-pending suite of dashboard controls. The company is privately held and headquartered in San Francisco, California.